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Instagram update adds new editing tools and post notifications

Instagram is making it easier to keep tabs on posts from friends, celebrities or other users you want to follow more closely. The app’...

Instagram is making it easier to keep tabs on posts from friends, celebrities or other users you want to follow more closely.

The app’s latest update adds the ability to subscribe to posts from specific users and introduces two new editing tools that allow you to adjust the color tones of your photos

The new editing tools, fade and color, appear in the app’s adjust menu and allow you to tweak the way colors look in your photo.

Fade softens all of the colors in your image “to bring a quiet tone,” Instagram says. The look is similar to certain filters already in the app but the fade tool seems to apply the effect in a more uniform way than filters, which focus more on particular parts of an image. Like other tools in the adjust menu, fade comes with a slider that allow you to control the strength of the effect.

Instagram’s new “fade” tool.

Image: Instagram

Color also plays with the color tones of an image by adding different tints to a photo’s shadows or highlights. Choose whether you want to focus on the darker parts of an image (shadows) or the lighter areas (highlights) and choose the tint. Yellow, orange, red, pink, purple, blue, cyan and green are the colors currently available.

This effect doesn’t have a slider control but it can be more or less dramatic depending on the image — red or purple tints may be more noticeable on a lighter image than a darker one, for example.

The new color tool adds different tints to your photo.

Image: Instagram

Finally, Tuesday’s update also adds the ability to subscribe to posts from users you follow. When viewing a friend’s profile, the “…” menu in the top right corner now has the option to “Turn on Post Notifications.” When enabled, Instagram will send push notifications each time the users you follow share a new post.

The latest update is rolling out to Android users Tuesday and to iOS “in a few days.” Post notifications are already available in both apps.